Monday, August 27, 2012

Montreal Mini Maker Faire

Hacklab.to exhibited at the Montreal Mini Maker Faire this past weekend, we drove up with a carload of stuff and people and had a total blast! I showed off my sensebridge stuff, we brought the flipdot display, and we had two 3D printers, hacklab's makerbot industries cupcake, and a prototype of PandaBot, a 3D printer that some friends of mine have been developing (kickstarter soon!). My Montreal Mini Maker Faire Flickr Set includes some shots of Foulab as well, which we visited Saturday evening. On a final note, we used AirBnB to find a place to stay, and it was AWESOME, we got a great house with four bedrooms only about 2 miles from the faire venue, only a block from some great restaurants on Sherbrooke, it even came with kittens! All that for only ~$100 a night, incredible deal.

As usual with a maker faire, there was tons of interesting stuff to see, including the lego-based WALL-E pictured right, some awesome tiny "ladybird" quadcopters, some cool steampunk stuff, a lot of great 3D printers (including some RepRaps by Foulab, the Up!, and an Ultimaker), several clever interactive motion-sensing games, and most mind-boggling for me, games of Muggle Quidditch. I kid you not, apparently it's been adapted for play by us mere muggles, and includes bludgers (dodgeballs), the snitch (a player dressed in all yellow who can use an area of play as big as "campus"), and of course the three hoop nets. Is there no limit to how silly a sport can be? For fans of Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality, I think it's worth noting that actually catching the snitch is apparently worth only 30 points in Muggle Quidditch, so the game is more balanced!